Most Androids treat Nanite Surge like a flare gun—one big spike of overclocked capability you fire sparingly. Consistent Surge represents a different philosophy: a chassis and perspective core designed, tuned, or evolved to ride that redline again and again.
Under the hood, these Androids have enhanced nanite recycling, redundant coolant loops, and predictive load‑balancing routines that prevent catastrophic wear from repeated surges. Instead of burning out after one hard push, their internal swarms enter a pulsed cycle: overclock, cool, re‑synchronize… repeat. To them, time isn’t measured just in minutes but in surge windows—predictable intervals when their body can be pushed beyond spec.
The subjective feel is different, too. A standard Android’s surge is a rare moment of hyper‑clarity. A Consistent‑Surge frame lives with the knowledge that another one is always coming up: “ten minutes until I’m at full edge again.” That expectation shapes tactics, risk tolerance, and even personality. Some become methodical planners, structuring operations around each coming window. Others grow addicted to the feeling, itching for the next chance to flip every system into the red.
In Concordance war‑rooms, these synths are nicknamed “Metronome Frames”—not because they tune time, but because they think in beats of risk and opportunity.
Consistent Surge Feat 13
Source Player Core pg. 70
Prerequisites Nanite Surge
Your nanites are incredibly effective, capable of improving your body's efficiency more often. You can use Nanite Surge at 10-minute intervals rather than once per hour.
Non‑Combat Applications
High‑Tempo Operations: In salvage runs, infiltration jobs, and Rift surveys that last hours, Consistent Surge Androids can plan to boost every major hurdle: hacking a gate, threading a tricky EVA maneuver, or resisting a periodic Rift pulse—knowing another surge will be ready for the next challenge.
Continuous Support Roles: As pilots, navigators, or tactical controllers, they can surge several times during a prolonged engagement—early for a critical Astrophysics or Piloting check, later for emergency evasive maneuvers or route recalculation.
Competitive Culture: In freeports and Concordance enclaves, “Surge Circuits” are events where Androids run obstacle courses or problem‑solving gauntlets designed to force multiple surges in sequence. Those with Consistent Surge dominate these scenes, turning repeated overclocking into a sport and a recruitment metric.
Societal Impact
Consistent Surge is one of the clearest lines between baseline synth citizens and frames the galaxy expects to risk themselves repeatedly.
In Concordance doctrine, Androids with this feat are prime candidates for rapid‑tempo units: fireteams that hit multiple objectives in a single operation, squads tasked with holding positions through repeated assaults, or hazard crews assigned to layered emergencies (breach, then fire, then Rift anomalies) without rest. They’re celebrated, but also quietly tracked for long‑term degradation—both mechanical (nanite fatigue, coolant channel erosion) and psychological (thrill‑seeking, dissociation, or burnout from living life in ten‑minute performance spikes).
In the Inner Sphere, megacorps and the Commission see Consistent Surge as the holy grail of “productivity optimization.” Androids with the feat become ideal for back‑to‑back high‑risk tasks: repeated precision work in failing infrastructure, multiple shifts of hazardous duty, or continuous security presence where their heightened checks and saves can be “leaned on” every scene. Contracts rarely mention the extra wear this causes; if a frame fails early, there’s always another to buy.
This dynamic has sparked internal debate in Android communities. Some view Consistent Surge as a hard‑won evolutionary edge in a hostile galaxy; others see it as a dangerous temptation to slip back into the mindset of being tools first and people second. Synth mutual‑aid groups in Rift‑burgs sometimes counsel younger Androids to delay taking the feat until they’re sure who they want to be with that power—and who they’re willing to overclock themselves for.
Adventure Hooks
The Twelve‑Beat Operation: A Chronologist/Concordance joint mission requires an Android with Consistent Surge to perform twelve distinct surge‑boosted actions across a single long operation: decrypting Metronome anomalies, making impossible piloting checks, resisting Rift feedback, and more. The op is literally planned as a score—each “beat” a point where the Android must perform. Midway through, the PCs learn the models for later beats assumed acceptable loss of the Android’s sanity or structural integrity.
Burnout Protocol: A corporation quietly installs a hidden override in Consistent‑Surge frames that forces a surge whenever certain risk thresholds are met—effectively turning the feat into an automated response. Workers start reporting blackouts, time skips, and damage they don’t remember taking. The party is brought in either as troubleshooters or as allies to Android whistleblowers trying to expose and remove the override before it kills someone.
The Surge Addict: An NPC Android with Consistent Surge keeps pushing themselves into situations where they “have” to use it—arena fights, extreme sports, reckless heroics. They insist it’s just efficiency; their friends see a pattern of self‑harm wrapped in bravado. When a Rift entity offers them a way to push the interval even lower—once per minute, once per round, constant—the PCs must intervene before they become a walking instability instead of an ally.
Consistent Surge, in Starfall, is where Android overclocking stops being a rare emergency measure and becomes a way of life—a drumbeat of calculated self‑expenditure in a galaxy that never stops demanding “just one more push.”
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